Have you slept with her?
Chelsea leaned in close to me, took a deep breath and asked. "Have you slept with her?" But before I could say anything, she spoke again. "Never mind. You don't need to answer. I know you did."
The 'her' she was referring to was a dance instructor named Catherine, but everybody calls her Cat. She was also the choreographer for some of the plays I directed for one of our local groups. She and I had been FWB for three years when Chelsea asked if I had slept with her. I was single and never married. Cat was divorced with no intention of re-marrying. She had her own dance studio and was both successful and happy; so was I. Successful and happy, that is. I did not own my own dance studio.
"Why did you ask? Why do you care?"
She looked at me with soulful eyes. "Because I'm jealous."
Well, that certainly made my eyes open wide. Chelsea and I had known each other for almost seven years.
She started as just another girl auditioning for a role in a musical I was directing. She was a 'triple threat' which meant she could sing and dance as well as act. I didn't cast her as the lead in that first show, but I did in three other shows. She started out good and only got better.
She was 18, when I first met her and had been dancing and singing since she was five. We became friends even though I was 8 years her senior. She went on to attend and graduate from our local university with a nursing degree and continued dancing, singing and acting. She liked comedies and musicals, but the university theatre department preferred doing plays from the likes of Chekhov, Miller, and Shakespeare, so she worked with our community groups so she could do the plays she preferred.
She and I would have lunch occasionally when we weren't working on a play. We even went to plays we both wanted to see in cities near us. There was never any hint of either of us showing any sexual interest in the other; we simply enjoyed each other's company and shared a mutual appreciation for theatre. In the recent past, she always seemed to have boyfriends and I always seemed to have someone to play with; usually it was Cat.
Anyway, she had just told me she was jealous. Half-jokingly, I asked. "Of who? Me or her?"
She smiled and blushed a bit. "Kinda depends on my mood."
"And what is your current mood?"
"Right now, I would be jealous of her."
Those few words started the hottest round of sex I had for a very long time. All sex is good, but Chelsea was really good. She, like Cat, had what is called by some, a 'dancer's body'; that means it is long, lean, and strong, and they both used them well; or maybe I just liked dancers.
After several months of sexual bliss, she told me she had been approached with a job offer. "I would be a traveling nurse," she said. "Going from place to place throughout the country, filling in at places with vacant positions. I would work until the position is filled, then either come home until another temporary job opens or I could immediately go on to someplace else and do it again. It just depends on what is needed, when, and where; and the pay is unbelievable. I don't think I can turn it down."
"Do you need to pass tests and get licensed in other states you may work in?"
"No. There is something called a Nursing Licensure Compact that allows us to work in, I think, about 25 states without having to get individual state licenses."
"It sounds like you've thought about this."
"I've known about it, but recently I've talked to other nurses who have done it and they tell me I'll either like it or hate it, but, again, the money is great."
"What about the theatre? Will you be giving that up?"
"For a while, anyway."
"Then, go for it. You're only young once."
It took two weeks for her to get everything in order; and she was gone.
Her leaving left a hole in my social calendar, but I managed. She went through a social drought the first three months she was gone as well, but things changed once she got to Denver. There she found a small group, or, it may be more factual to say that a small group found her. They were all medical professionals who prided themselves in two things: first was their dedication to their "art" as they called it. She had never thought of medicine as being art, but that group did. The second thing they prided themselves in was their ability to party.
There were eight of them before Chelsea joined. Three were MD's, (two male, one female) three were RN's, (two males and two females) and two were Nurse Anesthetists (one of each). They were all unmarried and enjoyed the more erotic side of life.
They told Chelsea that she was the first outsider invited to join the group. By outsider, they meant someone not known to another member for a long time. "There was something about you that each of us was attracted to individually and almost immediately." She was told by one of the other nurses in the group. "We had no idea what it was, but it was like a signal you broadcast."
When she was told that her comment was, "you mean you smelled my 'I need to be fucked' aura?"
"It had to be something like that," the other nurse laughed.
She called me the day after her first party with them and she was happier than I had ever heard her. "I thought I was going to go through some orgiastic fuck ritual where everybody took their turn with me, but it wasn't like that," she said.
I laughed. "You sound disappointed."
Laughing back, she said, "I think maybe I am."
"So, if you didn't get to fuck everyone, what happened?"
"It was fun, Brian. We just talked at first and they told me that I never had to do anything I wasn't comfortable with and that whatever I chose to do with whomever I chose to do it with was fine as long as both parties agreed to it. They also told me that everything they did was done sober. Drinking is fine, as long as it is not to excess and absolutely no drugs would be tolerated."
"Did they explain to you why they chose you other than your 'need to be fucked' aura? And exactly how did they approach you?"
"Actually, you are a big part of their decision."
"Me? How so?"
"Edie, the nurse who initially approached me about joining the group, and I have worked together since I first got here. We had just finished some long, hard hours working and were relaxing over coffee. She told me the hospital had a couple of traveling nurses before me and she wondered about how we dealt with the lack of intimacy while traveling. She was funny and in a roundabout way asked if I had any 'toys' with me that I used. I laughed and told her that I did, in fact, have a couple of favorites with me. It was strange because I was not the least embarrassed to tell her. Not that anyone had ever asked me, but...."
I interrupted her. "I didn't know you used toys."
"There's a lot about me you don't know. Anyway, she and I got on the subject of sex and I told her about you and that you were older than me."
"So, a bit older than you is okay?" Edie asked.
"Oh, God, yes. Brian was the best."
Brian is me, by the way. Brian Sparks. "So, you think I'm the best?" I asked her grinning even though we were on the phone and she couldn't see me.
"You know I think you're the best, but that's beside the point right now. Then she asked if I knew Dr. Jameson. I told her I did. He's about the same age as you, Brian, and handsome in a rugged sort of way. Actually, put him in a pair of boots and a Stetson hat and he'd be a perfect cowboy."
"Should I be jealous?" I asked.
"Do you want to hear about the party?"
